First day of Mama School!

When we awoke on the first day in Arkansas, I had but a whisper of a voice. My kids were still asking, "is today the first day of mama school?" They had been excited and waiting. I needed a bit more sleep and some recovery time before starting our school out right.

The Cherokee Nation Heritage Center was a few hours away. Twice a year they hold a few special days just for school age kids. October 1&2 just happened to be their fall offering. I certainly didn't want to miss out on the fun.

We set out early. I packed first breakfast for the car. We had second breakfast with friends along the way and then drove the last pitch to the Ancient Indian days. The place had lots of school and homeschool groups attending.  For $5 per school age child, we had our run of the place.

We learned about the Cherokee Syllabary and a few words. As the story goes, Sequoia didn't know English but he had seen others writing. He called it drawing on leaves.  The kids even got to practice drawing on leaves, Edie with an emphasis on drawing!

The kids all got a chance to shoot a real blow gun and later got to see a demonstration on how to make a dart for a blow gun. As a result, we will be saving bbq skewers and may need to contact a local chicken farmer to get some feathers. Ben wants to make one...then I think I'm on the hook for the hollowed out reed. That sounds like a tall order!

We learned so much about the spiritual side of the Cherokee, which is the fire dancing. They believe that God gave them fire and that by putting a message in the fire, they could contact God. The analogy was that fire was their cell phone to God. Love that image!  After a long explanation about the dancing, we got to try with a bear dance.  So we bring out our bear claws and march around the fire ring to the beat of the turtle shell shaker. When the sound gets loud, you growl at your neighbor! That was popular.

We also pinched a pot in the pottery area. Using real clay, the kids made balls, then stuck in their thumb in the middle. After pinching around once, the forming pot was big enough to get two thumbs in. After another round with 2 thumbs and fingers, We all shared our creations with one another. Edie was particularly proud of hers. The last step was to turn it over and squash it! Boy, that was satisfying and we didn't have to leave with something "precious" that would get smooshed accidentally. I additionally learned how you could fire pottery in, you guessed, a fire. I may have to try that in the near future...

We also watched a play by the local high schoolers and played marbles on the lawn with billiard balls. Edie & Ben were entranced by the face painting but they did not want to participate. Everyone got a arrow head. Ben wants to made a real arrow out of it, but that's another project.

First mama school day was a grand success! More adventure to come...